Category: Uncategorized

The US dollar is definitely going to be in focus for the rest of the week due to the Fed meeting that ends later today, the announcement of the Fed Chair nominee by President Trump tomorrow and the October employment report to be released on Friday. Starting with the Fed meeting, it is expected to give a signal that a December hike is a very strong possibility.

Fed chair Janet Yellen’s four year term expires in February and it falls to President Donald Trump to nominate a candidate to lead the central bank for the next four years. Traditionally, presidents continue the tenure of capable Federal Reserve heads from previous administrations. But despite Trump lauding a booming U.S. economy under Yellen’s watch, the president has nominated Jay Powell as the next federal reserve chairman.

The ADP National Employment showed private-sector businesses added 235,000 jobs in the month. The service sector accounted for the bulk of the job creation, adding 150,000 jobs. Professional and business services added the most positions, up 109,000. Job losses were seen in the trade, transportation, and information sectors, as well as education.

Base Metal Update:

Copper Analysts say copper’s rally this year–the metal is up 24% since January–should continue as the global economy improves and the market experiences supply constraints. Copper broke through $7,000 a ton for the first time in three years last week, the move was based on dollar weakness and fading worries about China’s economy and policy tightening.

Aluminum In a stellar year for base metals, aluminum has led the pack. Now, producers say surging raw material costs could drive prices even higher. Alumina, the raw material used to make aluminum, has jumped 56 percent since August after China shut down some production, triggering a wave of buying by traders and aluminum smelters.

US Markets: Dollar

World stock markets climbed on Monday, lifted by optimism over the outlook for corporate earnings and U.S. President Donald Trump’s tax reform plan, while the dollar gained as investors took a bullish view of the American economy.

The three major U.S. stock indices were poised to close at record highs, boosted by financials and healthcare stocks. U.S.

manufacturing surged amid strong gains in new orders and raw material prices, while rebounding construction spending in August bolstered the economic outlook even as Hurricanes Harvey and Irma are expected to dent third-quarter growth.

The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) said its index of U.S. factory activity rose to a reading of 60.8 last month, the highest reading since May 2004, from 58.8 in August.

Canadian Markets: Dollar Futures at Canada’s main stock exchange were little changed on Tuesday after oil prices dipped as investors took profits on some large positions that have built up in the last couple of weeks.

Two rate hikes over the summer by the Bank of Canada following the economy’s surprisingly powerful start to the year had seen the loonie approaching 83 cents US in September.

In currency markets, the Canadian dollar continued to weaken against the greenback, trading at an average price of 79.97 cents US, down 0.16 of a cent.

The last time the loonie traded below 80 cents was on Aug. 31 when it closed at $79.77 US. Last Friday, Statistics Canada reported that the country’s eight-month march of monthly growth in the economy came to an end in July when gross domestic product was essentially unchanged at zero per cent growth compared with June. A speech last Wednesday by Bank of Canada governor Stephen Poloz also suggested a more cautionary tone to the bank’s approach going forward when he said he had no prearranged route for further interest-rate hikes.

A very light Canadian economic calendar this week, labour market reading on Friday will be the one to watch. In the U.S., non-farm payroll data will also headline on Friday, with a Yellen speech on Wednesday attracting attention.

Scrap prices moved sideways during the month of September and are poised to go lower this month!

Steel Shred

Talk in the steel market for the month of October is indicating steel spot prices are expected to move lower over the next 30 to 60 days. Discussions continue with the Trump administration in regards to applying tariffs on steel imports. Steel imports are up 24 percent year to date through August and imports from China have increased about 7 percent, according to the U.S.

Base Metals

The three-month zinc price is continuing to lead the upward trend hitting a new ten-year peak at $3,292 per tonne earlier today. The lead price took its cue from zinc’s strength, and closed $73 per tonne higher than Monday’s 5pm close price. Nickel prices continued to rebound, trading a further $280 per tonne higher as it aims to get back above $11,000 per tonne.

The Greengo Recycling Crew wants you and your company to benefit from our great prices. Please feel free to call us with any questions you may have! And remember we also do pick-ups and have available a bin service for your onsite needs. Contact 705-722-8711

Markets are predicting a rough three months for copper on the whole but has suggested the quarter could start in a positive flurry as inventories of refined metal tighten following the recent sell off. The more copper, particularly refined copper, China imported, the healthier the outlook for manufacturing activity and demand for all industrial metals. That’s no longer the case. China’s increased smelting and refining capacity has seen its appetite for mined copper concentrates grow exponentially in recent years. Imports rose from 6.4 million tonnes (bulk weight) in 2011 to 17.0 million in 2016. However, the pace of import growth has braked sharply from 28 percent last year to just 3 percent in the first eight months of this year.

Three-month aluminium gained 0.5 percent to $2,142 a tonne after rising 1.25 percent overnight. China’s crackdown on pollution has helped boost prices in aluminium by 27 percent this year on expectations of widespread capacity shutdowns during winter.

Note from our President

“Technology can not only be cool but it can also be game changing to the way we manage our waste recyclables. Many companies are currently refining machines such as this one that take the guess work out of recycling.”

It’s sometimes difficult to know where to put different types

Do you ever find yourself hovering over a recycling bin, not sure whether the container in your hand can go in or not? What is the difference between high-density polyethylene (HDPE) and low-density polyethylene (LDPE) anyway? Why do plastics all have the little arrow triangle sign on the bottom, even when they can’t all be recycled?

A new “smart” recycling bin aims to help relieve any confusion. The bin uses computer vision—an algorithm that can “learn” to recognize images much the way the human brain does—to identify the material held in front of its cameras, and then tells the consumer exactly where to place the container.

“People are confused about where to recycle things, and consumers are confused about the actual material the packaging is made of,” says Sajith Wimalaratne, the food and beverage commercial manager at Cambridge Consultants, the British consulting and product development company that created the bin. “There are hundreds of materials out there that look the same, but can’t be recycled in the same ways.”

Wimalaratne and his team envision the smart bins as working like this: a consumer goes to a Starbucks and orders a latte in a paper cup (or a juice in a plastic bottle, or a milk in a carton, etc.). Once he’s finished, he goes up and taps his phone against the bin, registering his identity with the bin app via Bluetooth. He then holds his cup over the bin’s cameras, which take two photos. The computer vision identifies the material and lights up the correct area of the bin. The user then gets a reward via the app. That reward would depend on the bin’s owner or sponsor. In a Starbucks, for example, it could be points towards a free coffee. But it could be anything: charity donations, free merchandise and so on. If the user didn’t want to use the app or register his identity, he could simply use the computer vision to help them know where to toss his cup.

Do you ever find yourself hovering over a recycling bin, not sure whether the container in your hand can go in or not? What is the difference between high-density polyethylene (HDPE) and low-density polyethylene (LDPE) anyway? Why do plastics all have the little arrow triangle sign on the bottom, even when they can’t all be recycled?

A new “smart” recycling bin aims to help relieve any confusion. The bin uses computer vision—an algorithm that can “learn” to recognize images much the way the human brain does—to identify the material held in front of its cameras, and then tells the consumer exactly where to place the container.

“People are confused about where to recycle things, and consumers are confused about the actual material the packaging is made of,” says Sajith Wimalaratne, the food and beverage commercial manager at Cambridge Consultants, the British consulting and product development company that created the bin. “There are hundreds of materials out there that look the same, but can’t be recycled in the same ways.”

Wimalaratne and his team envision the smart bins as working like this: a consumer goes to a Starbucks and orders a latte in a paper cup (or a juice in a plastic bottle, or a milk in a carton, etc.). Once he’s finished, he goes up and taps his phone against the bin, registering his identity with the bin app via Bluetooth. He then holds his cup over the bin’s cameras, which take two photos. The computer vision identifies the material and lights up the correct area of the bin. The user then gets a reward via the app. That reward would depend on the bin’s owner or sponsor. In a Starbucks, for example, it could be points towards a free coffee. But it could be anything: charity donations, free merchandise and so on. If the user didn’t want to use the app or register his identity, he could simply use the computer vision to help them know where to toss his cup.

Wimalaratne hopes the bins will help increase rates of recycling, which he describes as “appalling.” In the U.S., the recycling rate is less than 35 percent of all waste (the UK is marginally better, at about 40-45 percent).

Whether or not people recycle has a lot to do with cultural norms, says Chaz Miller, director of policy and advocacy at the National Waste and Recycling Association, a trade association representing private waste and recycling companies.

“Homeowners—residents of single family housing—have adopted the cultural norm of putting their recyclables on the curb on collection day,” Miller says. “However, they are not always doing this right. So while we have created this cultural norm of participating, we still need to do work on recycling right.”

In public spaces and multifamily housing, the cultural norms to recycle are not as strong, Miller says. Where there’s more anonymity, there’s less pressure to participate.

Wimalaratne and his team hope their smart bin will help create a cultural norm around recycling in public spaces, especially when paired with the app. Users, especially millennials, may enjoy the validation they get from recycling and earning rewards. And the team also thinks the bin will appeal to corporations, who are under increasing pressure to be seen as sustainable.

“Brands are wanting to go in this direction to create positive PR for themselves as responsibility for the end of the product life cycle,” Wimalaratne says.

In addition to being in chain cafes like Starbucks, the Cambridge Consultants team envisions bins in public spaces like parks, airports and malls, sponsored by various corporations—Coke or McDonald’s, say, or the mall or airport itself.

It’s a win-win for companies, they say, who could use the bins to gather valuable data about customer habits, whether its individual consumer data gathered through the app, or simply data about how much or what kind of waste is recycled.

Right now the team is taking their bin prototype on the road to trade shows, hoping restaurants or other companies will become interested. Once a company decides to order a bin, it could be manufactured relatively quickly and cheaply, Wimalaratne says.

“It uses off-the-shelf low-cost technologies,” he says. “The most expensive thing is the PC the whole thing runs on.”

Miller thinks technology does have a role in improving recycling, though it’s not as important as the human education element. “Some recent breakthroughs in robotic sorting technologies are particularly promising,” he says. “But the most important challenge remains ensuring you and I are doing it right.”

From our President

“A few weeks ago, we shared with you North America’s trouble with recycling our plastic waste. Perhaps If we all start to think a little outside the box, like these people at Nube Green, we can find the solutions to our waste issues.”

A sportswear company pursues a sustainable slam dunk

For Ruth True, it all started on an art trip to China.

“I took a trip in 2008 with a group from the Seattle Art Museum to China. We visited four provinces and seven cities — it was fascinating — but above it all, I could not look past the fact that we rarely saw the sky. In fact, we saw blue sky only half of one day during our two weeks in China. The Chinese had gone from not being able to eat to not being able to breathe, in large part due to the mass consumption in the U.S and elsewhere in the developed world. ”

So True, a serial entrepreneur who’d worked in the food and catering businesses, came back to Seattle, determined to self-fund something new that would have a positive environmental impact. But what to do?

She went shopping.

With her five kids, four of them girls.

Two answers started to appear — “go local” and “no new stuff.”

Ruth True noticed she could find little in the way of apparel and toys that were made in the U.S, despite searching local shops and big chains such as Whole Foods Market. So, in 2009, she opened a little shop and called it Nube Green. She decided on the name Nube because of feeling like a traditional “newbie” in the environmental world but liked the aesthetics of the spelling Nube for her brand.

The shop featured only U.S.-made and sourced gift and apparel items. This, she reasoned, would reduce carbon emissions and also would appeal to patriotic and help-the-economy impulses. Still, with the massive cost advantages from manufacturing in China and, even more so, in Southeast Asia, people told her it couldn’t be done. And, truth be told, it’s been a struggle: “In our first five years or so, we were able to survive but people had a hard time finding us and the amount of U.S.-sourced goods was limited.”

But True, for the most part, was undaunted. And she was about to get a second bolt of green business inspiration, this time from her basketball-playing daughters.

She couldn’t find U.S.-made girls basketball uniforms. On top of that, at a Las Vegas youth basketball tournament, True noticed thousands of kids buying one-time use plastic water bottles, which ended up in the trash. The LED light bulb went on above her head and she decided to start a company that would work to solve both concerns: She would manufacture basketball uniforms in the U.S. made from recycled plastic bottles.

And so Nube9 was born.

She kept the brand Nube from her store and added “9” because of the initial estimate that it takes nine plastic water bottles to make one jersey. “I did a ton of research on manufacturers who used recycled product — and settled on Repreve, a company based in North Carolina which makes yarn from recycled bottles. We then found a great knitter, a great seamstress in Los Angeles, conducted more R&D, secured some space in L.A., and off to work we went.”

The Nube9 team developed five of its own recycled poly fabrics but purposefully didn’t patent them. “We want to expand the category,” offered True. “So we went with an ‘Open Source’ business model.” It started with basketball uniforms, for obvious familial reasons, but by growing its team and responding to the players’ feedback, Nube9 began to refine the product and expand its line to many sports.

Youth sports (younger than high school) started as Nube9’s key target market. In part, this was due to the dominance of Nike and other big players in the high school sports market. But an even bigger reason was an influence:

“The idea was to get cool uniforms on the bodies of our youth, the key influencers of popular culture, and create ‘aha moments’ that will spread the word about the unis virally,” said True. “When the kids try them on, they are blown away by the idea of uniforms being made from plastic water bottles and love the custom look of the jerseys.”

Ruth True

Nube9 basketball uniform made in the U.S. from recycled plastic bottles.

Nube9 has found that, once it gets one team on board, word then spreads among the basketball community about the environmental benefits, competitive pricing and custom looks and the other teams follow. Or, as True puts it, “Who wouldn’t want to look great on the court and help save the environment at the same time?” Meanwhile, coaches are bullish on the Nube9 uniforms from an efficacious perspective as they respond to the quality, durability, wicking and softness of the fabric.

Trying to think two moves ahead, Nube9 recently launched a streetwear line. “This greatly broadens our potential market beyond youth to include daily wear, the yoga world, as well as the growing ‘athleisure’ segment,” True said. “This is a higher-priced/better margin segment for us, but we’re still managing to stay lower than companies like Lululemon.”

The company is taking a unique, cutting edge, “telling stories through apparel” approach: Per True, “We took a picture from the New York Times of plastic ocean waste and turned it into a design on our leggings in one day.” And a brilliant, powerful social responsibility element is embedded in the purchase price: Buy a pair of leggings and fund the work of a climate scientist.

2016, Nube9’s first year on the market, saw the company get off to a modest start but it was able to divert 795,000 plastic bottles from the landfill. 2017 finds the company at a tipping point of sorts: sales are conservatively estimated at $1 million, and, according to True, the company is ready to handle larger orders.

And it also has a plan to handle the uniforms’ end-of-life.

The company urges teams to send uniforms, which otherwise would be discarded, back to Nube9. “The closed-loop recycling approach of Nube9 uniforms is critical and we are using companies on the cutting edge of the technology,” said True. “We simply cannot put more micro-fiber into the oceans. Most high schools put old uniforms into storage or, worse, send them to the landfill.”

Presidents thoughts of Greengo Recycling:

“Plastics, although very convenient, light weight and inexpensive are causing serious global environmental concerns. China is no longer interested in accepting the worlds comingled wastes, they simply have developed far enough as a society that they do not want the burden of cleaning up our problem materials any longer. It’s time our culture rethinks our “use it and toss it lifestyle” and seek out products made from sustainable sources, such as Steel, Aluminum, Copper and Stainless. All natural products that come from the earth and are easily recycled here, at home”.

Seth Borenstein / AP

Jul 19, 2017

(WASHINGTON) — Industry has made more than 9.1 billion tons of plastic since 1950 and there’s enough left over to bury Manhattan under more than two miles of trash, according to a new cradle-to-grave global study.

Plastics don’t break down like other man-made materials, so three-quarters of the stuff ends up as waste in landfills, littered on land and floating in oceans, lakes and rivers, according to the research reported in Wednesday’s journal Science Advances .

“At the current rate, we are really heading toward a plastic planet,” said study lead author Roland Geyer, an industrial ecologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “It is something we need to pay attention to.”

The plastics boom started after World War II, and now plastics are everywhere. They are used in packaging like plastic bottles and consumer goods like cellphones and refrigerators. They are in pipes and other construction material. They are in cars and clothing, usually as polyester.

Study co-author Jenna Jambeck of the University of Georgia said the world first needs to know how much plastic waste there is worldwide before it can tackle the problem.

They calculated that of the 9.1 billion tons made, nearly 7 billion tons are no longer used. Only 9 percent got recycled and another 12 percent was incinerated, leaving 5.5 billion tons of plastic waste on land and in water.

Using the plastics industry own data, Geyer, Jambeck and Kara Lavender Law found that the amount of plastics made and thrown out is accelerating. In 2015, the world created 448 million tons of plastic — more than twice as much as made in 1998.

China makes the most plastic, followed by Europe and North America.

“The growth is astonishing and it doesn’t look like it’s slowing down soon,” Geyer said.

About 35 percent of the plastic made is for packaging, like water bottles. Geyer said his figures are higher than other calculations because he includes plastics material woven into fibers like polyester clothing, including microfiber material.

An official of a U.S. trade group said the plastics industry recognizes the problem and is working to increase recycling and reduce waste.

“Plastics are used because they are efficient, they are cost effective and they do their jobs,” said Steve Russell, vice president of plastics for the American Chemistry Council, an industry association that represents manufacturers. “And if we didn’t have them, the impact on the environment would be worse.”

Using alternatives to plastics for packaging and consumer goods such as glass, paper or aluminum requires more energy, Russell said.

The world still makes more concrete and steel than plastic, but the big difference is that they stay longer in buildings and cars and degrade better than plastic, Geyer said. Except for what is burned, “all the plastics that we made since 1950 are still with us,” he said. “The fact that it becomes waste so quickly and that it’s persistent is why it’s piling up in the environment,” said Chelsea Rochman, a professor of ecology at the University of Toronto. She wasn’t part of the study but like other outside experts praised it for thoroughness and accuracy.

“At some point we will run out of room to put it,” she said in an email. “Some may argue we already have and now it’s found in every nook and cranny of our oceans.”

Plastic waste in water has been shown to harm more than 600 species of marine life, said Nancy Wallace, marine debris program director for the U.S. National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration. Whales, sea turtles, dolphins, fish and sea birds are hurt or killed, she said. “It’s a huge amount of material that we’re not doing anything about,” Wallace said. “We’re finding plastics everywhere.”

The demand for electric vehicles is forecasting to increase noticeably over the next ten years as technology improves, the price gap with petrol cars is closed and more electric chargers are deployed for mass public use. Electric vehicles use a significant amount of copper from their batteries, electric motors, and wiring used throughout the vehicle. A single car can have up to 19,685 feet of copper wiring coursing throughout, this equals to approx. 130-140 pounds of copper wiring! Research predicts this increase will raise copper demand for electric cars and buses from 185,000 tonnes in 2017 to 1.74 million tonnes in 2027. Electric vehicles could account for about 6 per cent of global copper demand in ten years, according to analyst estimates, rising from less than 1 per cent this year.

A slightly healthier supply of scrap is expected to meet a mill demand nearly even to last month’s levels, which would keep June’s scrap market sideways to down.

One exception to this viewpoint could be the prime grades, which are expected to be sideways to strong sideways, primarily because demand could outpace supply. Several other important issues, from exports to transportation availability to finished steel prices to some volatile scrap inventories, still could make June a less predictable market.

The forecasting is centering around a slight downward move in demand coupled with a minor push up in supply of some grades. Domestic mills and foreign buyers are not expected to need more scrap than during last month’s market.

The price for the red metal has risen 2 per cent to its highest level since September 2015 on hopes president elect Trump will boost spending on infrastructure and construction in the u.s.

“We will rebuild our infrastructure, which will become second to none,” Trump said in his victory speech in New York.

As summer ends and fall looms on the calendar, September is looking to bring yet another decrease for steel markets across the country. Scrap flow remains strong at the local yards, but low oil prices and global market chaos have slowed production at steel mills everywhere. The demand for domestic steel products has been weak in the first half of the year and as troubles continue in our petro economy, there is little hope of a strong turnaround in demand.

Simply put there is far too much supply for too little demand and the bottom line is expect low prices to stay for the near term.

#ferrous #steel